10/31/13

"The Two-Headed Giant"

"THEN Redlegs said suddenly, “I should very much like to see a Two-Headed Giant. Lend me a sword.” Then they all roared with laughter and told him how silly he was to think that he could kill the Two-Headed Giant when they couldn’t even kill the One-Headed Giant. But he went off all the same, with his head in the air, and he found the Two-Headed Giant on the great hills where it is always Sunset. And then he found out a funny thing. The Two-Headed Giant did not rush at him and tear him to pieces as he had expected. It certainly did scream and shout and bellow and blare and with its two heads together. But the two heads were, as a matter of fact, screaming and shouting and bellowing and blaring in an odd way. They were screaming and shouting and bellowing and blaring at EACH OTHER."One head said, “You are a Pro-Boer”; the other said, with bitter humour, “You’re another”; in fact, the argument might have gone on for ever, growing more savage and brilliant every moment, but it was cut short by Redlegs, who took out the great sword he had borrowed from one of the Knights and poked it sharply into the Giant and killed him. The huge creature sprawled and writhed like a continent in an earthquake; and one wild head lifted itself for a moment in death and said to the other, “You are beneath my notice”. Then it died happy. Redlegs went on along the road that had been guarded by the Two-Headed Giant, until he came to the Castle of the Princess. After a few words of explanation, I need hardly say they were MARRIED."

~From "The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads," printed in The Coloured Lands: Fairy Stories, Comic Verse and Fantastic Pictures, by G.K. Chesterton.